Title

When Do I Read More?

Broad Question

Will people read more at different time of the day?

Specific Question

Does the time of day affect how many words 10 eighth graders read for 10 minutes?

Hypothesis

It is hypothesized that the students will read more in the late morning because they will have had more of the day to become awake, but they won’t be all tired out from everything going on in the day.

Graph of Hypothesis

Hypothesis Graph

Variables

Independent Variable: Time of day
Dependent Variable: How many words are read
Controlled Variables: The packet that they read, people, how they mark it, the counter,

Vocabulary List That Needs Explanation

Circadian Rhythm- Also known as a body clock. Physical, mental, and behavioral changes in a 24-hour cycle.

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General Plan

One block of 8th graders will be used for this experiment to find out if the time of day affects how many words eighth graders read. Ms. Fish will assign the block of 8th graders a packet to read for half an hour during her class. She will have them mark where they are when the half hour is done by writing a line after the word they finished on. They will then pass them in to her. Ms. Fish will then give me the packets that they read and marked, and they will be counted. To make the counting easier, the paragraphs will have numbers next to them saying how many words there are from the start. There will be 1 trial for each time of day when the class block begins which will be at 9:30 AM, 11:30 AM, and 1:45 PM. The trials will be on March 19th, and two trials on March 29th because it was the last day available to run the trials and two trials were still left to do, so there was one trial in the morning and one in the afternoon. The data from each time of day will be averaged and then put into graphs and tables.

Potential Problems And Solutions

A potential problem is that a student could have been absent one of the days that the students read, and the way to solve the problem is to only use the results of those who were there for all three of the trials.

Experimental Design

(add the correct headings from the experimental design page before beginning)

Resources and Budget Table

• One class of 8th graders from JBES
• 20 copies of the same packet
• 1 calculator
• Pieces of paper
• Pen

Data Table

TRIALS	1: 9:30 3/19	2: 11:30 3/29	3: 1:45 3/29	Average	Rounded Average
Andrew J.
Jacob E.
Maggie
Dana
Dante
Will P.
Calvin
John D.
Alex
Doug
Average
Rounded Average
Words Per Minute

Time Line

March 4 Complete design and collection of all materials (JBES)

March 7 Run a test of the set up, not collecting data, just seeing if everything works (JBES)

March 19 Run first official trials of experiment, collect first data (JBES)

March 29 Complete all trials of experiment and all data collection (home) April 11 Complete all data analysis; mean, median, range, graphs (home)

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Background Research

Circadian Rhythm- wikipedia
Also referred to as a body clock. Physical, mental, behavioral changes in a 24-hour cycle.Endogenously driven (internally driven)Latin root is around the day Circadian rhythm is found in most living things including plants.It’s basically a clock inside your body that tells you around what time of day it is from the sun. The study of circadian rhythm is chronology Biological clocks inside the body controls the circadian rhythms “Groupings of interacting molecules in cells throughout the body” -Also known as the “Master Clock” keeps all the body clocks in sync.“Circadian rhythms are produced by natural factors within the body, but they are also affected by signals from the environment. Light is the main cue influencing circadian rhythms, turning on or turning off genes that control an organism’s internal clocks.”“Circadian rhythms are important in determining human sleep patterns. The body’s master clock, or SCN, controls the production of melatonin, a hormone that makes you sleepy. Since it is located just above the optic nerves, which relay information from the eyes to the brain, the SCN receives information about incoming light. When there is less light—like at night—the SCN tells the brain to make more melatonin so you get drowsy.”
Average Speed of Reading for 8th Graders-for eighth graders it is 250 words per minute, which would be 7500 words per half hour and 2500 words per 10 minutes. I suppose maybe for my experiment I will measure it in words, and not in pages because it really depends on the book and how big the pages are.

References

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circadian_rhythm
http://www.nigms.nih.gov/Education/Factsheet_CircadianRhythms.htm
http://www.answerbag.com/q_view/2195744_
__http://www.free-speed-reading.com/articles/what-is-the-average-reading-speed-of-americans__

Detailed Procedure

1. Gather the materials
2. Talk to the reading teacher and ask if she can assign one class of eighth graders a packet that they can read for 10 minutes in each class at different times of day and mark where they are when they’re done
3. Collect the data from the teacher
4. Count up how many words each student read
5. Average out all the data.
6. Do steps 1-4 for each trial.
7. Make tables and Graphs for analyzing all the data.

Photo List

Focused readers
Daydreaming readers
The front of the packet
The packet with my notes on it
The marked lines
The sticky note w/ times on it
Paper w/ amount of words everyone read

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Results

The results show that the last time of the day (1:45 PM) was the time of day that the eighth graders read the most amount of words, with the average of about 3,309 words per 10 minutes. The late morning time (11:30 AM) was when they read the second most amount of words, with an average of about 2,045 words per 10 minutes, and the midmorning time (9:30 AM) was when they read the least amount of words, with an average of about 1,956 words per 10 minutes.

Graphs

Graph of Words per Minute

Graph of Different Time Averages

Graph of Individual Averages

Graph of Individual Results

Photos

Student Reading

Student Reading

Student Reading

Student Reading

Student Reading

Notes Sheet

Results Sheet

The Packet

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Data Analysis

Conclusion

The purpose of this experiment was to see if the time of day affected how many words a group of ten eighth graders read for ten minutes. The independent variable would be the time of day, the dependent variable would be the amount of words, and the controlled variables would be the packet that they read, the people, and the person that counts all the words. The results showed that the time of day did indeed affect how many words were read, and that the eighth graders read more words in the afternoon than in the late morning or mid morning. The average of words read for that time of day (1:45 PM) was 3,309 words per ten minutes.

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Discussion

The purpose of this experiment was to see if the time of day affected how many words a group of ten eighth graders read for ten minutes. The results showed that the time of day did affect how many words were read, and that the eighth graders read more words in the afternoon than in the late morning or mid morning.The independent variable would be the time of day, the dependent variable would be the amount of words, and the controlled variables would be the packet that they read, the people, and the person that counts all the words. There were three different trials, one for each time of day. The times were 9:30 AM, 11:30 AM, and 1:45 PM. The hypothesis was not supported by the trials. It was hypothesized that the eighth graders would read more words on the second trial, because they would have had more of the day to become awake, and less of the day to become tired again. No patterns or trends were noted during this experiment. The relationship between the independent variable conditions and changes in the dependent variable, also cause and effect, was noticed. The students seemed to be reading about 1550 more words in the afternoon trial than the other trials. A problem that arose during the experiment was that some students were not there for all the days that were read, so instead of 20 readers, there were only 10 readers. Another problem was that the times that they read were in the mid morning, late morning and again in the late morning. That data could not be used because there needed to be a trial in the afternoon, and there was not. So another trial was run on the same day the second trial to get an afternoon trial. As this experiment was just about to be run, there were a couple of changes. It was decided that the eighth graders would only read for ten minutes, to make the counting easier. While the experiment was being run, there was another change. Only ten out of the twenty reader’s results would be used because half the people were gone on different trial days, so they had incomplete results. The experiment could have been conducted better in concerning the counting of the words. The packet could have been scanned into the computer and put onto a document to count the words, instead of being counted by hand. No technology was needed to conduct this experiment.

Benefit to Community and/or Science

People could benefit from this experiment because they could know when they would most likely read the most during the day. If some one was trying to read a specific amount of words, they would know when they could save the most time by reading in the afternoon. Knowing that could help them so they don’t spend extra time at different times of the day trying to finish a book. Eighth grade teachers could benefit from this experiment because if they wanted time during their class to do learning activities besides reading, they would know when the eighth graders would read the most.

Abstract